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Why are not beauty, goodness and the virtues, together with
knowledge and intelligence, included among the primary genera?
If by goodness we mean The First- what we call the Principle of
Goodness, the Principle of which we can predicate nothing, giving
it this name only because we have no other means of indicating
it- then goodness, clearly, can be the genus of nothing: this
principle is not affirmed of other things; if it were, each of
these would be Goodness itself. The truth is that it is prior to
Substance, not contained in it. If, on the contrary, we mean
goodness as a quality, no quality can be ranked among the
primaries.
Does this imply that the nature of Being is not good? Not good,
to begin with, in the sense in which The First is good, but in
another sense of the word: moreover, Being does not possess its
goodness as a quality but as a constituent.
But the other genera too, we said, are constituents of Being, and
are regarded as genera because each is a common property found in
many things. If then goodness is similarly observed in every part
of Substance or Being, or in most parts, why is goodness not a
genus, and a primary genus? Because it is not found identical in
all the parts of Being, but appears in degrees, first, second and
subsequent, whether it be because one part is derived from
another- posterior from prior- or because all are posterior to
the transcendent Unity, different parts of Being participating in
it in diverse degrees corresponding to their characteristic
natures.
If however we must make goodness a genus as well [as a
transcendent source], it will be a posterior genus, for goodness
is posterior to Substance and posterior to what constitutes the
generic notion of Being, however unfailingly it be found
associated with Being; but the Primaries, we decided, belong to
Being as such, and go to form Substance.
This indeed is why we posit that which transcends Being, since
Being and Substance cannot but be a plurality, necessarily
comprising the genera enumerated and therefore forming a
one-and-many.
It is true that we do not hesitate to speak of the goodness
inherent in Being" when we are thinking of that Act by which
Being tends, of its nature, towards the One: thus, we affirm
goodness of it in the sense that it is thereby moulded into the
likeness of The Good. But if this "goodness inherent in Being" is
an Act directed toward The Good, it is the life of Being: but
this life is Motion, and Motion is already one of the genera.
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